The UN General Assembly met to discuss global disaster risk reduction and its effects on obtaining the Millenium Development Goals. With this past year being one of the worst in history for natural disasters, many communities have lost schools, housing, and hospitals, bringing setbacks to the fulfillment of the Millenium Development Goals. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is promoting the adoption of the UN's global disaster risk reduction plan with a 10 point checklist to build these countries' resilience. It is believed that increasing resilience to natural disasters will actually have a compounding effect to sooner reaching the MDGs. In order to achieve this, officials emphasize creating strong parterships between governments, community organizations, private enterprises, and sponsors as being even more essential. This also emphasizes the powerful part UCP-SARnet can play in achieving this goal.
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4 Comments
Earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and China, floods in Pakistan and Europe, wildfires in Russia and the United States, cyclones and tropical storms in Asia. Beacuse of these disaster countries loose billions of dollars and loose all progress in they have made in the U.N MDG's. Although the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is 10 point checklist to build these countries' resilience; How will this check list help with lose progress?
The idea is that when these countries rebuild, they can choose to build in a way that is more resilient to these natural disasters. The example given in the article is that they may have to rebuild a road anyway, but they can choose to use the same amount of funds to build the road more inland than along the coast. Additionally, there are materials that can be used in building that help to withstand natural disasters, like earthquakes and hurricanes. And for those that cannot afford to rebuild there is a risk, which is why there is the call for partnerships to be created among us all. Because when it comes down to it, natural disasters don't care whether you're a rich or poor country or where the boundary lines are between countries. They are something that effects us all.
It is great to see the United Nations taking action with regards to the Natural Disasters this year… of course disasters have negative implications for all of the MDGs; these unexpected natural forces not only halt improvement efforts but also worsen conditions in respective countries. The Global Disaster Risk Reduction plan is an impressive way to take into account what many countries need to do to take care of underlying issues (resilience to disasters) before they can make lasting progress on the MDGs and more importantly progress on bettering the conditions of the people in their countries.
And unfortunately nothing can be done with regards to what is lost to these disasters. Disasters are going to continue to affect the world even beyond 2015. Realizing now that there is a sustainable way to achieve the MDG goals is the most important thing to do; countries need to realize the problems and mistakes in their plans and just continue pushing forward with the efforts. Forward thinking is going to be important no matter what progress countries make between now and 2015 and the decades to come.
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